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So who will eat humble pie?
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There's a new fad in town. It's called veganism. SUMA RAMACHANDRAN gets a taste of the pros and cons.
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Vegans say they are one step ahead of mere vegetarians.
FIRST, EATING red meat was declared a no-no by doctors. Bad for the heart and various other organs, they said. Then, eaters of fish and fowl were dragged over hot coals for their inhuman, predatory instincts. After the chicken went the eggs, banished from breakfast tables as cholesterol-laden products of poor, ill-treated hens. And, just as vegetarianism was on its way to becoming THE eating habit of the millennium - experiencing a revival in India too - there came a fast-spreading movement which proclaimed that if you want to go truly green, cut out the white poison drink too.
Notwithstanding the slick ads on TV, milk drinking is currently at the receiving end of a double whammy. If you ignored the pleas to stop "drinking the blood of an animal", then the growing tribe of activist-scientists will wave research findings in your face, telling you that a glassful of milk is full of live bacteria, mucous and pus.
And if that turns your stomach, then think of 28-year-old S. Vaishali, who was told all this by a fellow guest at a party. Vegetarian Vaishali is a good listener and would have given the articulate US-returned gent her full attention, had he not sprung it on her when she was helping herself to some rasmalai. What got her goat was that he "gave her a crash course on not only how bad milk was for human consumption, but garnished it with a gory account of cruelty to animals in the dairy industry". Now she wants nothing to do with veganism - the cause he was trying to espouse. "I might have seriously considered everything he said if he'd timed it better and not adopted such a condescending attitude. So I'll just continue to have my mosaranna and occasional kadai paneer, thank you," she declares.
No doubt that veganism - or true vegetarianism, as its proponents like to call it - is as healthy, if not healthier, than a vegetarian diet. Nutritionists will tell you that the only deficiency (of vitamin B12) that arises from the absence of dairy products in your diet can be compensated by taking synthetic supplements.
And soyabean products (soymilk, soyabean nuggets) will give you all the protein that other vegetables can't provide.
But since veganism has as much to do with ethics as health, it involves giving up not only eating animal and dairy products, but also giving up using leather (including footwear, wallets, watchbands, etc.,), wool, cosmetics containing products of animal origin or tested on animals, and more importantly, medicines tested on animals. Very tricky, given that in our country, there is little information forthcoming on such matters even if a full-blown controversy erupts in the media. So, when some champions of veganism ruffle feathers by trying too hard to get others to love their fellow living beings, they lose credibility - not to mention a possible convert - and end up being accused of pushing their own agenda.
"It's an imported fad from the West,'' says Seema Gupta, a 34-year-old bank officer and mother of two. "They're the ones with a meat-centric diet. I don't say that we're any less guilty if we kill animals and eat them, but the whole world is now realising that the old-fashioned Indian diet is one of the most balanced and healthiest.
Milk and dairy products form an essential part of it but non-veg items are usually a side dish if not an occasional treat.
In this country we don't have bacon and eggs for breakfast, lamb chops for lunch and meatloaf for dinner. But many vegans tend to link the whole thing to animal rights in a big way. If it's cruelty to living things we're talking about, what about vegetable rights?" she asks, and proceeds to paint a rather vivid picture of all manners of plant life being helplessly cut down, peeled chopped, ground and what not. "So should we wait around for trees to drop their fruit, for crops to give us their grain of their own free will? It's not practical.
There is something called the food chain, you know. And like it or not, human beings are right at the top."
Of course, that didn't prevent Venky K.S. and his sister Achala from turning vegan. "I was introduced to the idea while chatting on the internet with a friend in Manchester. It wasn't so difficult to give up non-veg food though dairy produce was a different ballgame altogether," he confesses.
So why didn't he hook up with others of his kind to make the transition easier? "I did, but I found that veganism in Bangalore is heavily oriented towards animal welfare. I'm not the activist kind and would rather spend time on other things." He uses the Internet to help his "education process" as to which products are vegan and which are not.
But he's not sure if, in a life-and-death situation, he'll turn down medicines tested on animals, given that there's so little information available. "Sometimes it seems like a waste of time researching and keeping track of such things," he admits.
"Better call me an aspiring vegan in your article," he tells me.
Achala, he informs, has stronger convictions but she didn't want to talk about her vegan experience, saying it was a "private matter".
Agnes J. Thoompunkal says she does feel bad about how cows are made to produce extra milk for human beings. "Whenever I take a milk-based thing, I realise I'm helpless, so I ask forgiveness of the cow, if it's still alive, or ask God to do the necessary routing. I really do. And if (the animals) are kept in bad conditions, they shouldn't be."
Then there are others like Manu Giriraj who thought of going veggie but though "the spirit was willing, the flesh was too tempting to give up". On a more serious note, he feels that when the revulsion gets strong enough, he'll give up non-veg food, leather and maybe even drugs tested on animals but not milk and dairy products.
"Milk and curds are a great source of nutrients and the benefits outweigh whatever harm the anti-milk lobby has been talking about so far. I believe that any natural food taken in moderation can't do harm.
Besides, there are pesticides in vegetables and fruits, and the air we breathe is polluted. If you start trying to keep track, there are simply too many things to worry about. I don't plan on worrying about milk, at least for now.
And all the alternatives that vegans in the West talk about, like soymilk, are neither freely available, nor affordable here."
Seema points out that the West has a history of popularising something till research or the experience of the next generation proves otherwise (big dams, pesticides, allopathic medicines, hamburgers, thalidomide, the list is endless). "So who knows? Veganism might just turn out to be the best thing for the human race," she admits.
And when that happens all the omnivores, yours truly included, will have to eat crow. Or whatever the vegan equivalent of that may be.
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